Outrage us

Tom Driscoll

Sunday

Mar 30, 2014 at 11:16 AMMar 30, 2014 at 2:23 PM

I just recently had a nice week’s break on a sunny (yet bitterly cold at times) island. Time with family, walks by the ocean and of course a little reading. Courtesy of local library I brought along ‘The Outrage Industry’ —what I hoped would be an interesting study by two Tufts academics, a political science professor and a sociologist. I’d seen an excerpt in a recent salon.com article and ordered it through inter library loan right away. The authors take up a subject I’ve been mulling for a while, the current fashion for outageousness. They proffer that we’ve begun to evolve a new and distinct media form, a new mode of political discourse and an entertainment industry, all in the mode of outrage… outrageousness, it sells. Oh, how it sells.

The book starts with the appalling spectacle of Rush Limbaugh’s verbal assaults upon Sandra Fluke that followed upon her testimony before Congress on the subject of contraceptive insurance coverage. The scary syndrome they touch on at the outset (and never fully explore to my satisfaction in the rest of the book) is the way that the outrage served all parties to the supposed debate about about a supposed issue. Limbaugh may have called into and upon some dark receptacle of consciousness in his base of followers by repeatedly berating Fluke as a slut and a prostitute, but he also called upon something deep within those who were revolted by his conduct.

There is that aspect of outrage we enjoy —that we enjoy ridiculing and condemning. This appeals to something in us —in the body politic maybe— that demands to be fed —whether or not it is truly nutritious.

In my humble opinion ‘The Outrage Industry’ by Jefrey Barry and Sarah Sobieraj ultimately glazes over an argument that should be had at in favor of seeming analytics, an air of academic detachment and objectivity. Their own biases play out nevertheless. They settle for the obvious object of contempt, Fox News, with furtive gestures at even handedness weakly intended by lumping MSNBC into the study on occasion. They draw a compelling map of the changed landscape and history that has brought us here to where outrage, umbrage and indignation are our modes of debate and public thought, where once we might have hoped for reasoned debate and thoughtful consideration. In the end the authors seem eerily accepting of this new media and its methods. Their closing comments are more about coping than counteracting the subject of their study —and this strikes me as strange —like, where’s the outrage?

I just recently had a nice week’s break on a sunny (yet bitterly cold at times) island. Time with family, walks by the ocean and of course a little reading. Courtesy of local library I brought along ‘The Outrage Industry’ —what I hoped would be an interesting study by two Tufts academics, a political science professor and a sociologist. I’d seen an excerpt in a recent salon.com article and ordered it through inter library loan right away. The authors take up a subject I’ve been mulling for a while, the current fashion for outageousness. They proffer that we’ve begun to evolve a new and distinct media form, a new mode of political discourse and an entertainment industry, all in the mode of outrage… outrageousness, it sells. Oh, how it sells.

The book starts with the appalling spectacle of Rush Limbaugh’s verbal assaults upon Sandra Fluke that followed upon her testimony before Congress on the subject of contraceptive insurance coverage. The scary syndrome they touch on at the outset (and never fully explore to my satisfaction in the rest of the book) is the way that the outrage served all parties to the supposed debate about about a supposed issue. Limbaugh may have called into and upon some dark receptacle of consciousness in his base of followers by repeatedly berating Fluke as a slut and a prostitute, but he also called upon something deep within those who were revolted by his conduct.

There is that aspect of outrage we enjoy —that we enjoy ridiculing and condemning. This appeals to something in us —in the body politic maybe— that demands to be fed —whether or not it is truly nutritious.

In my humble opinion ‘The Outrage Industry’ by Jefrey Barry and Sarah Sobieraj ultimately glazes over an argument that should be had at in favor of seeming analytics, an air of academic detachment and objectivity. Their own biases play out nevertheless. They settle for the obvious object of contempt, Fox News, with furtive gestures at even handedness weakly intended by lumping MSNBC into the study on occasion. They draw a compelling map of the changed landscape and history that has brought us here to where outrage, umbrage and indignation are our modes of debate and public thought, where once we might have hoped for reasoned debate and thoughtful consideration. In the end the authors seem eerily accepting of this new media and its methods. Their closing comments are more about coping than counteracting the subject of their study —and this strikes me as strange —like, where’s the outrage?

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